Stevens Point, Wis.
An officer in the Army Reserve was arrested at his Wisconsin home last week and charged with rigging bids and stealing reconstruction money while working with the now-dissolved Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. According to court papers, the officer, Lt. Col. Michael Brian Wheeler, accepted money and gifts to help steer $13 million in reconstruction contracts to an American businessman, Philip Bloom. Bloom and a former CPA official, Robert Stein Jr., were arrested last month. The men were also accused of smuggling stolen CPA money into the U.S., and using it to buy machine guns, grenade launchers, and other military grade weapons for their own use.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Citizenship: Trump order blocked againFeature After the Supreme Court restricted nationwide injunctions, a federal judge turned to a class action suit to block Trump's order to end birthright citizenship
-
Loyalty tests: The purge at the FBIFeature Kash Patel is conducting polygraph tests on FBI agents to weed out anyone speaking badly about him
-
The all-seeing tech giantFeature Palantir's data-mining tools are used by spies and the military. Are they now being turned on Americans?
